1.0 Field of the Invention
This invention relates to identifying a configuration for an application; and in particular, this invention relates to identifying a configuration for an application in a production environment.
2.0 Description of the Related Art
Many businesses provide services using the Internet. FIG. 1 depicts an exemplary web application environment 20 which provides a web service. A number of clients at, for example, a cell phone 22-1, a server 22-2, and computer systems 22-3 and 22-4 connect to a network 24 such as the Internet and request information, such as a web page, from a web server 26. The web server 26 receives the request and returns a response to the request, for example, the web page. The exemplary web server 26 of FIG. 1 comprises various types of application software and hardware on which that application software executes.
In FIG. 1, the web server 26 has three tiers. A first tier has one or more web presentation servers 28. The web presentation servers 28 are software applications which respond to requests from the clients and provide the response if the information is available at the presentation server, or pass the request to the second tier.
The second tier has one or more web application servers 30. The web application servers are software applications which provide integration business logic to execute the web application. In this example, the web application servers 30 access a third tier. The third tier has one or more database servers 32. The database servers are also software applications. For example, if the processing of the request reaches the database servers 32, the requested data is passed to the web application servers 30, which may further processes the requested data, and pass the requested data to the web presentation servers 28 which generate a web page which is returned to the client.
In this example, each tier of server application software executes on computer system hardware which is separate from the computer system hardware of the other tiers. In some web application environments, each web presentation server, web application server, and database server may execute on a different computer system. Other web application environments may combine the functionality of the tiers on a single computer system. Yet other web application environments may combine the functionality of the web presentation servers and application servers on a single computer system separate from the database servers. In various web application environments, an edge server may be between the presentation server(s) 28 and the network 24.
When businesses plan to provide a new web application, or provide an existing application to a larger group of users, the configuration of the hardware that will handle the load of the application and that will satisfy performance targets at an acceptable cost, needs to be determined. Therefore, there is a need for a technique to determine a hardware configuration to implement a new or expand an existing application.